In Starkest Terms, Yesterday’s “Shooter” Alert Was a Failure; UH Needs a Better Crisis Plan

This will be a long post of an email exchange based on today's first commentary here at CHORE on what we believe was an inadequate emergency alert to the University of Hawaii community. The first email is from UH spokesman Gregg Takayama, who responded to our message calling attention to CHORE's first post. Our response to Gregg follows his email:

Hi Doug:

Thanks for your concern about emergency communications at the UH Manoa campus. Just to let you know that the email alert system used yesterday is not the only method of emergency communications available to us. Based on information provided to UH campus security by Honolulu police, it was decided that it was not necessary to cancel classes or halt any planned activities at UH Manoa.

If it was necessary to evacuate buildings or to order people to stay inside and lock their doors, we would have used building PA systems and loudspeakers on campus security vehicles to make the announcements. Loudspeakers were installed on all campus security vehicles earlier this year (post-Virginia Tech). We would also have asked for assistance from HPD to do so.

Text-messaging on cell phones is another method of communications that’s being developed, with testing to begin later this year. And in an emergency, we would also enlist help from commercial radio and TV outlets to get word out to our campus community.

I think the underlying theme, Doug, is that we realize no single technology is fool-proof, so our emergency communications range from low-tech loudspeakers (and loud speakers) to the higher-tech. UH Manoa is probably the only campus in the nation to suffer damage from flood, fire, and earthquake in the span of about 3 years. Campus officials with much more experience than me realize that we’re likely to lose power in a disaster, rendering computer email useless; so other means are necessary.

I hope this clarifies a bit what we’re doing at UH Manoa, and what we’re prepared to do, in case of emergencies.

Thanks,
Gregg

Our response:

Gregg, thanks for your email. Here’s the issue as we see it:

Once the University is moved to issue an alert about a possible attack on the campus community, as you were yesterday, UH has an obligation to communicate what it knows as broadly, completely, efficiently and rapidly as possible. From the available evidence, UH didn’t do that.

We already know from published reports and anecdotally that the text message reached only some students and faculty. We don’t know what percentage did not receive it, but it’s not hard to imagine a majority was uninformed of the threat. Therefore, the text message essentially was a failure because too many members of the University community were unaware of the threat.

You allude in your email to other communications channels. UH apparently did not employ them yesterday. Newspaper accounts don’t mention them, and neither does your email. What was the information provided to UH campus security by Honolulu police that led University officials to conclude only a text message was needed but not loudspeakers, not announcements in classes and other buildings, not broadcasts by on-campus KTUH-FM and the commercial stations?

Unlike campus security officials, we don’t have insider information that allows them to nuance menacing threats. Maybe someone who’s overheard muttering to himself on a city bus only warrants a text message and not the other channels available to UH. Frankly, we’re not comfortable with security officials making those nuanced calls. That’s the kind of decision Virginia Tech officials made on their own, with disastrous results.

Here’s our suggestion for your emergency communications SOP:

Any threat to the security of the campus community warranting an alert to students and faculty will be disseminated by all available means – text messaging, emails, loudspeakers in buildings and in the campus’s exterior spaces, and broadcasts over KTUH and the commercial stations.

In other words, the alert level would go from ZERO to HIGH with no intermediate levels. We think this mindset can’t be faulted, whereas the SOP guiding yesterday’s ineffective alert already is under attack. Yesterday’s threat involved potential mass murder, and with the threat-maker’s whereabouts still unknown, UH issued an ineffective alert that may have eluded thousands of individuals on your campus. What possible reason did UH have to downplay the importance of that threat and therefore communicate with half measures to your community?

A final suggestion: Allow students and faculty to make their own decisions about how to react to a threat. If students and faculty members decide to leave or skip class based on a report such as yesterday’s, let them, and don’t penalize them for their absence.

If you’re going to trust personal communications devices such as cell phones with text messaging, take a giant leap and actually trust individual students and faculty members to make good decisions about their personal safety. They deserve that much.

Aloha,

Doug
(A postscript said the email exchange would be posted here at CHORE.)
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We urge University officials to see yesterday's incident as a wake-up call and reason to revise their planning on how to keep the campus community informed about security threats. The current plan is demonstrably inadequate.